Again, I will just say this. I would MUCH rather have the government running my health care than a company whose main obligation is to make as large a profit as possible for their shareholders. That goal is fundamentally and basically at odds with good health care.

By the way, my health insurance is a PPO, not an HMO, and I have had excellent coverage from them so far. No hassles whatsoever. Whereas I know of people who have had real problems with HMOs (you can chose an HMO plan if you want at my workplace) so I'm not sure it's the distinction between the two that makes the difference.

One thing that obviously does make a difference is whether you are covered under a group plan or are buying your own individual plan. When I started my current job, I was still covered by my old insurance plan and was trying to figure out how long I needed to hang onto it. Right before my job started I had a case of abdominal problems, which they thought was diverticulitis, and I was concerned that if I needed further treatment the new plan would exclude it as a pre-existing condition. But I found out that because my plan was a group plan, the contract disallowed that. They had to take me pre-existing conditions and all.

People like us, cancer survivors, who lose their insurance for some reason (like loss of their job--unfortunately not uncommon) who can't get onto a group plan like that are really screwed. And that's one reason for the number of people who are ininsured (who,again, end up costing us all in the long run. Just read an article in the NY Times of health care policy in PA where they did research that showed that 6% of the insurance costs of those who have insurance in PA bascially went to cover the costs of eventually treating the uninsured, usually when they were really critically sick--and their percent of uninsured is quite a bit lower than the nation's--I think they said only 7%).

Nelie